A new EVI framework improves ParVI methods by maintaining variational structure and reducing KL-divergence.
problem Improving variational inference methods for better approximation of target distributions.
method EVI framework that minimizes the VI objective function based on an energy-dissipation law, including a new 'Approximation-then-Variation' scheme.
result The new scheme significantly decreases KL-divergence and outperforms existing ParVI methods in fidelity.
A new ParVI framework improves particle-based variational inference methods.
problem Non-trivial kernel design in particle-based variational inference methods.
method Proposes a generalized Wasserstein gradient descent (GWG) framework with broader regularizers.
result Demonstrates strong convergence guarantees and effectiveness on simulated and real data.
New coin sampling method for Bayesian inference without learning rates.
problem Scalable Bayesian inference with learning rate tuning issues.
method Coin sampling for gradient-based Bayesian inference.
result Comparable performance to other ParVI algorithms without learning rate tuning.
New particle-based VI algorithm expands function class and improves scalability.
problem Limited function class in particle-based VI algorithms restricts flexibility and scalability.
method Introduces a functional regularization term to expand the function class and proposes PFG algorithm.
result Proposed PFG algorithm has larger function class, improved scalability, better adaptation to ill-conditioned distributions, and provable convergence.
A new particle algorithm improves mean-field variational inference.
problem Efficiently approximating nonparametric posterior distributions in machine learning.
method Introduces PArticle VI (PAVI), a novel particle-based algorithm for nonparametric mean-field approximation.
result Obtains non-asymptotic error bounds for PArticle VI, providing the first end-to-end guarantee for particle-based MFVI.
Proposes PGPS for efficient Bayesian inference.
problem Efficient sampling from complex posterior distributions.
method Path-guided particle-based sampling with Log-weighted Shrinkage.
result PGPS generates samples closer to target distribution.
Particle-based variational inference offers a flexible way of approximating complex posterior distributions with a set of particles. In this paper we introduce a new particle-based variational inference method based on the theory of semi-discrete optimal transport. Instead of minimizing the KL divergence between the po…
Particle-based variational inference methods (ParVIs) have gained attention in the Bayesian inference literature, for their capacity to yield flexible and accurate approximations. We explore ParVIs from the perspective of Wasserstein gradient flows, and make both theoretical and practical contributions. We unify variou…
BSVGD improves sampling for multimodal distributions using branching.
problem Sampling from multimodal distributions.
method Random branching in Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD).
result Theoretical convergence guarantee and empirical validation.
New method accelerates energetic variational inference using particle dynamics.
problem Efficiently solving variational inference problems with reduced computational cost.
method Particle-based variational inference with implicit scheme, inspired by energy quadratization and operator splitting.
result Significantly reduces computational cost compared to existing methods.
Electrostatics method samples complex distributions deterministically.
problem Sampling and inference of complex, high-dimensional distributions.
method Electrostatics-based particle system with Newton mechanics principles.
result Method achieves comparable performance to other methods in benchmark tasks.
New algorithm trains latent diffusion models using interacting particles.
problem Training latent diffusion models efficiently and accurately.
method Reformulate training as minimizing a free energy functional, then approximate with interacting particles.
result The new algorithm outperforms previous methods in experiments.
DriftLite improves inference quality of diffusion models without retraining.
problem Adapting pre-trained diffusion models to new target distributions without retraining.
method Lightweight, training-free particle-based approach that steers inference dynamics with optimal stability control.
result Consistently reduces variance and improves sample quality over existing methods.
Paper proposes LSVGD to stabilize GAN training via Langevin Stein Variational Gradient Descent.
problem Mode collapse and performance deterioration in GAN training.
method Langevin Stein Variational Gradient Descent (LSVGD) incorporating noise to stabilize training.
result LSVGD improves performance and stability of various GAN models.
Improves SVGD for high-dimensional Bayesian inference by reducing variance collapse.
problem Variance collapse in SVGD reduces accuracy and diversity of estimation.
method Augmented Message Passing SVGD (AUMP-SVGD) method, a two-stage optimization procedure.
result AUMP-SVGD achieves satisfactory accuracy and overcomes variance collapse in various benchmark problems.
Optimal weights improve particle-based approximations of discrete distributions.
problem Improving particle-based approximations of discrete distributions.
method Proving optimality of weights and showing how to compute them efficiently.
result Optimal weights can be computed from existing particle-based methods without extra costs.
Real-life control tasks involve matters of various substances---rigid or soft bodies, liquid, gas---each with distinct physical behaviors. This poses challenges to traditional rigid-body physics engines. Particle-based simulators have been developed to model the dynamics of these complex scenes; however, relying on app…
Gaussian-SVGD dynamics converge to Gaussian distributions under certain conditions.
problem Understanding the theoretical properties of SVGD, especially for Gaussian targets.
method Detailed theoretical study of Gaussian-SVGD dynamics, considering both mean-field PDE and discrete particle systems.
result Gaussian-SVGD dynamics converge linearly to the Gaussian distribution closest to the target in KL divergence.
Stein variational neural network ensembles improve diversity and uncertainty estimation.
problem Lack of proper Bayesian justification and diversity guarantees in deep neural network ensembles.
method Particle-based inference methods, specifically Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD), operating in weight space, function space, and hybrid settings.
result SVGD methods improve diversity and uncertainty estimation, approaching the true Bayesian posterior more closely.
We propose a general statistical framework for clustering multiple time series that exhibit nonlinear dynamics into an a-priori-unknown number of sub-groups. Our motivation comes from neuroscience, where an important problem is to identify, within a large assembly of neurons, subsets that respond similarly to a stimulu…
PAPAL algorithm finds mixed Nash equilibria in continuous games.
problem Finding mixed Nash equilibria in non-convex, non-concave games.
method Particle-based Primal-Dual Algorithm (PAPAL) for weakly entropy-regularized min-max optimization.
result PAPAL offers non-asymptotic convergence guarantees for ε-mixed Nash equilibrium. NVGD uses neural networks to infer distributions without kernel choices.
problem Challenges in choosing kernel functions for SVGD.
method NVGD parameterizes the witness function of the Stein discrepancy with a neural network.
result NVGD achieves good performance on various inference problems.
Approximate inference in high-dimensional, discrete probabilistic models is a central problem in computational statistics and machine learning. This paper describes discrete particle variational inference (DPVI), a new approach that combines key strengths of Monte Carlo, variational and search-based techniques. DPVI is…
Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a particle-based inference algorithm that leverages gradient information for efficient approximate inference. In this work, we enhance SVGD by leveraging preconditioning matrices, such as the Hessian and Fisher information matrix, to incorporate geometric information into SV…
A new method solves high-dimensional MFGs using particle-based flow matching.
problem Solving high-dimensional Mean-Field Games (MFGs) is computationally challenging.
method Proposes a particle-based deep Flow Matching (FM) method to update particles and train a flow neural network.
result Proves convergence of the scheme to a stationary point sublinearly and linearly under convexity assumptions.
New method uses EKI for efficient Bayesian inference in high-dimensional problems.
problem Efficient inference for high-dimensional posterior distributions in physics-informed neural networks.
method Ensemble Kalman Inversion (EKI) for high-dimensional posterior inference.
result EKI-based inference provides comparable uncertainty estimates to HMC-based methods but with reduced computational cost.
Deep density methods improve filtering in high-dimensional systems.
problem Nonlinear filtering in high-dimensional systems.
method Two deep density methods based on Feynman-Kac formulas and neural networks.
result Logarithmic deep backward stochastic differential equation filter outperforms classical methods in high dimensions.
New algorithms accelerate SVGD convergence using deep unfolding.
problem Improving the speed of SVGD convergence.
method Integrating deep unfolding into SVGD for parameter learning.
result Proposed algorithms achieve faster convergence in various tasks.
A new algorithm for optimizing probability distributions converges linearly.
problem Optimizing functionals over families of probability distributions.
method Variational transport: particle-based algorithm approximating Wasserstein gradient descent.
result Variational transport converges linearly to the global minimum of the objective functional.
Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a recently proposed particle-based Bayesian inference method, which has attracted a lot of interest due to its remarkable approximation ability and particle efficiency compared to traditional variational inference and Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. However, we observed th…
MWGraD solves multi-objective distributional optimization using particle-based gradient descent.
problem Simultaneously minimize multiple objective functionals over probability distributions.
method Iterative particle-based algorithm MWGraD, estimating and aggregating Wasserstein gradients.
result Demonstrates effectiveness on synthetic and real-world datasets.
New algorithms for sampling in constrained domains without learning rates.
problem Sampling in constrained domains with fairness constraints and post-selection inference.
method Coin betting ideas from convex optimisation and a unifying framework for constrained sampling.
result Our algorithms achieve competitive performance without hyperparameter tuning.
Generative ParVI learns flexible sampling from posterior distributions.
problem Avoiding arbitrary parametric assumptions in variational inference.
method Neural sampler trained with functional gradient of KL-divergence.
result GPVI outperforms previous generative ParVI methods and is competitive with other approaches.
PASOA optimizes Bayesian design by improving SMC samplers and EIG.
problem Sequential design optimization for accurate parameter inference.
method Sequential optimization using contrastive estimation, SMC samplers, and tempering.
result PASOA optimizes design and inference with improved consistency.
New method for data assimilation using score-based models.
problem Bayesian inverse problem of identifying plausible state trajectories.
method Score-based data assimilation, learning a score-based generative model of state trajectories.
result Effective method for zero-shot observation scenarios.
Proposes optimizing neural network ensemble diversity in feature space.
problem Improving diversity in neural network ensembles while maintaining performance.
method Optimizes particles in the feature space of a specific intermediate layer.
result Significantly outperforms Deep Ensembles on various metrics.
New method for constrained sampling using gradient flows.
problem Sampling from constrained domains.
method Introducing a boundary condition for gradient flow to confine particles within the domain.
result Provable continuous-time convergence in total variation for constrained sampling.
FoRDE uses input gradients to improve neural network ensembles.
problem Improving neural network ensembles for robustness and accuracy.
method Proposes FoRDE, an ensemble learning method based on ParVI, which repels function space by input gradients.
result FoRDE significantly outperforms DEs and other ensemble methods in accuracy and calibration.
A new method for learning gradient flows from population dynamics.
problem Reconstructing population dynamics from limited data.
method Residual approach to enforce continuity equations, combining with data-fitting divergence.
result Demonstrated state-of-the-art performance across trajectory inference benchmarks.
It is known that the Langevin dynamics used in MCMC is the gradient flow of the KL divergence on the Wasserstein space, which helps convergence analysis and inspires recent particle-based variational inference methods (ParVIs). But no more MCMC dynamics is understood in this way. In this work, by developing novel conce…
Variational Proximal Policy Optimization improves reinforcement learning from human feedback.
problem Policy mode collapse and brittle exploration loops in reinforcement learning.
method Particle-based variational inference framework with Mixture-of-Experts architecture.
result Significant improvements in complex reasoning benchmarks.
KSD Descent uses KSD to sample from a target distribution efficiently.
problem Sampling from complex target distributions efficiently.
method Wasserstein gradient flow of KSD, using L-BFGS optimization.
result KSD Descent can sample from a target distribution using a set of particles.
Neural model predicts object states and physical parameters from visual observations.
problem Computational models struggle with physical reasoning and adapting to new environments.
method Visual prior predicts particle-based system from visual observations; inference module refines estimates subject to dynamics constraints.
result Model can infer physical properties within a few observations and adapt to unseen scenarios.
A new method for online VI in SSMs using asymptotic contrast.
problem Lack of functionality for streaming data in standard VI methods for SSMs.
method Propose maximising an IWAE-type variational lower bound on the asymptotic contrast function using stochastic approximation.
result OSIWAE allows for online learning of model parameters and latent states.
SIFG uses noisy particles to efficiently sample from complex distributions.
problem Efficient sampling from complex distributions using particle-based methods.
method SIFG introduces a semi-implicit functional gradient flow with Gaussian noise to improve sampling efficiency and accuracy.
result SIFG achieves strong theoretical convergence guarantees and efficient sampling.
State space models (SSM) have been widely applied for the analysis and visualization of large sequential datasets. Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) is a very popular particle-based method to sample latent states from intractable posteriors. However, SSM is significantly influenced by the choice of the proposal. Recently Ha…
New optimization method for sampling from unknown density measures.
problem Sampling from measures with unknown normalization constants.
method Mollified Interaction Energy Descent (MIED) method.
result Gradient flow of MIE converges to chi-square divergence.
Advocates for a new posterior that predicts better than classical and generalised Bayes.
problem Combining parameter inference and density estimation for better predictive models.
method Predictively Oriented (PrO) posterior using mean field Langevin dynamics.
result PrO posteriors converge to the predictively optimal model average, adapting to model misspecification.